V.N. Vasavan. File
| Photo Credit: The Hindu
The Kerala High Court-appointed Special Investigation Team (SIT) probing the “misappropriation” of gold-plated copper moulds encasing the stone carvings and sculptures at the Sabarimala Ayyappa Temple inspected a jewellery shop in Bengaluru, Karnataka, on Saturday (October 25, 2025).
Officials privy to the probe said the SIT has been in the city since Thursday (October 23, 2025) to verify the antecedents of the prime accused in the case, Unnikrishnan Potti.
Mr. Potti, who is in SIT’s custody, is reportedly with the team. Officials said the SIT inspected Mr. Potti’s apartment in the city and also interviewed the jewellery shop owner with whom he had financial transactions.
The SIT reportedly seized documents from the businessperson, who allegedly claimed to have donated gold through Mr. Potti to supposedly create a gilded cover for the sanctum sanctorum’s original wooden door.
The SIT’s case against Mr. Potti was that he convinced the Travancore Devaswom Board (TDB) authorities in 2019 that he would restore the fraying gilded encasings for free at a metal works factory in Chennai.
The TDB’s internal vigilance wing found that the “refurbished moulds” returned by Mr. Potti weighed less than the originals and had scarce gold content.
In its report to the High Court last month, the vigilance wing raised the possibility that the suspect had smelted the artefacts for the gold at the factory, or had replicated them on the sly to sell the originals to wealthy collectors for private worship.
When asked whether the SIT had confiscated the “missing gold” from Bengaluru, Devaswom Board Minister V.N. Vasavan said the “investigation was on the right track.”
Speaking to reporters in Thiruvananthapuram, Mr. Vasavan said the High Court was monitoring the probe. “Commenting on the stage or direction of the investigation will be tantamount to sub-judice,” he said.
Travancore Devaswom Board (TDB) president, P.S. Prasanth, said the “SIT would recover every grain of gold filched from the temple.”
Last week, the SIT had submitted in a magistrate court at Ranni in Pathanamthitta that Mr. Potti, who worked as an assistant to a priest in Sabarimala during the 2004-08 period, had insidiously gained traction with the temple orthodoxy and TDB administrators by prevailing on wealthy devotees in Bengaluru, Hyderabad and Karnataka to donate lavishly to the temple.
Mr. Potti also coordinated their temple visits and became popular among the circle of wealthy Ayyappa devotees, including film stars and industrialists, in Bengaluru, Hyderabad and Chennai. He moved to Bengaluru, where he served as a priest at the Jalahalli Ayyappa Temple.
The SIT has accused Mr. Potti of chartering the gilded coverings to wealthy devotees for private worship at their respective homes. It has also arrested a TDB official, Murari Babu, for facilitating the “gold theft” by itemising the gilded coverings as made of pure copper before handing them over to Mr. Potti’s accomplices for repairs in 2019.
Published – October 25, 2025 01:48 pm IST
